Blood in the Water
by DirtWaterPrince
Summary: "She hadn't been on the receiving end of this look since their first weeks on Earth, when she still thought he might kill her. She'd forgotten how small Bellamy could make you feel with just a look. " Clarke finds Bellamy in the taking of Mount Weather.


**The fact that I'm an adult and still write this stuff is f-ing humiliating. As a result, this has not been BETA-ed (or even spell checked.) Still, I haven't been able to sleep because I'm pretty stuck on this so here you go, ya animals. **

He didn't recognize her at first. She came around the corner with a barbaric sword in her hand, hair pulled back in tight braids down her spine and thick leather armor across her chest. His gun sight caught on her chest over her heart, but the flash of blond hair over her shoulder froze him in place.

For her part, Clarke was glad she had a sword in her hand, because she doesn't think she would've hesitated when she saw the lone uniformed man tucked halfway behind the door jam, gun centered on her chest. She started to dodge away, but her eyes were arrested by sudden realization. "Bellamy!"

2 quick steps, then she stops again as his fingers tighten, shaking, around the gun still menacing her. "Bell...it's me...what are you do-"

"Where's Octavia?" he insisted fiercely. His hands steadied but didn't lower.

"She's behind me, with Indra, with the grounders, Bellamy stop point-"

"Shut up, Clarke. How can I...you've lied twice, twice to me about my sister's safety." She stands very still. This is not the reunion she imagined. She has no trouble remembering her lies, as numerous as they are becoming. Once, when sickness overtook them and she sent Octavia for the cure; once when she insisted that she was out of range of the missile bearing down on Tondc. Lies.

She nods then slowly, timidly. Clarke had forgotten the intensity of his eyes. She hadn't been on the receiving end of this look since their first weeks on Earth, when she still thought he might kill her. She'd forgotten how small Bellamy could make you feel with just a look.

"Bell, what are you doing?" He glances furtively over his shoulder at the door, then looks back at her. Dark circles ring his eyes, and bruises and scratches have left his face and neck mottled. A fierce guilt plunges through her chest; even from here she can see the tell tale circles of large syringe needles riddled along his neck. stretched taut when turns his head.

His eyes lose some of their focus as he answers her "I was wrong before. I was wrong. We're not Grounders. " It's been so long, it takes her a minute to understand the reference; it feels like a century ago since he rallied them to war, and she defied him. So much has changed since then.

"Level 4 taken." Ravens voice crackles through the radios in their ears and Clarke nearly jumps out of her skin.

"I heard what you said. In the catacombs. It was broadcasting on the radio frequency." He glances behind him again, at the door. "We aren't grounders, I'm not your Second. We're supposed to be a team. Supposed to trust each other. They're just kids, Clarke." A cold sinking feeling.

"Kill them all. Thats what you said. I told you there were...little kids in here. " Looks over his shoulder again. " I killed one of their dad's. it's the first thing I did in this damn mountain. Now he can't protect him..."

Suddenly, Clarke understands. He's going to stand here. He's going to die here, if she lets him.

Briefly she contemplates knocking him out, dragging him away. He's lost weight here in the mountain, and she's gotten stronger, she might could manage. But with him here, some of the brutality has seeped away; there's no Lexa to lecture her on her weakness, no mother to undermine her authority. It's just Bellamy. So she hefts one of the guns she's picked up along the way over her shoulder and moves forward to slip in beside him.

He stares at her warily and it occurs to her that she has pushed their fragile friendship too far, that he might ask her..."don't ask me to leave Bellamy," her voice low. "You'll need me when the grounders come. They won't recognize you. You need me." _and I need you to survive. _

After a long moment he nods, "I've never asked you to do anything, Princess. Why start now?" He settles back down into a crouch, and she takes her chance to glance through the window in the door. At first she sees only empty desks scattered across the room. Then a flash of blue catches her eye, a little shoe twitching farther under the desk. Little hands in thick gloves waving at each other frenetically. This is what children look like, she thinks, not a crowd of delinquent teens.

They stay there, hunched down, side-by-side as each level falls, as people die around them. Clarke is there to stop the grounders when they appear, roaring, around the same corner from where she came; she directs them onward into the mountain.

The price is high, but Mount Weather falls.

Lexa declares their revenge complete, and the Grounders are amazed and grateful when Abby successfully cures many of the Reapers of their addictions; the program is not 100%, but any of them returning to their people is like dead men rising. The alliance is further fortified, the small individual stories of a grounder covering a sky persons back, or a sky person pulling a grounder from harms way. War has, in it's strange way, foraged a sturdier peace than anything else could.

Abby, in her boundless energy, has begun to cure the remaining mountain men, those who had allied. Those wounded who are beyond saving are used to harvest right there in the same dank rooms as Dr Tsing. It' s gruesome, emotional work, and Clarke and Sinclair work tirelessly for 24 hours after the others have returned to rest, and to celebrate. They listen over the now open radio signals to Lexa's victory speech, to the roaring party as the people mingle.

It's because of these distractions that Clarke has lost track of Bellamy. He had turned away the medical care offered, preferring to hunt down his sister. He'd refused to leave the room of school children unguarded until Abby's plan became clear. Even then, he'd escorted them to the lab, discussed in length what would happen to them. Assimilated was the word Kane had chosen; they were more like the Sky People than Grounders, after all; only then had he turned his attention to his sister.

It's the cold hours before dawn now, and everywhere is silence around the shared camp. Everyone is resting, finally at ease and feeling safe, close with loved ones.

She shouldn't assume this kind of familiarity anymore, but she still walks into his tent without preamble, expecting to find him asleep, peaceful. She's more than a little shocked to see 2 people. They're both seated on opposite ends of the bed, fully clothed and at a respectable distance; she'd just never realized that he and Raven had any sort of relationship.

Raven looks up at her as Clarke enters, eyes wide like a deer in headlights, but Bellamy is still looking at Raven with an inscrutable expression.

"I, uh, think I've made my point," she says, turning back to Bellamy. She's on her feet and almost out the door in a second, "you know where to find me." She smiles with uncharacteristic embarrassment and slips through the flap.

He's still not looking at her, hands over his eyes, body language the very picture of weariness. He doesn't want to see her, to talk to her at all, but she's been rehearsing this speech all night, keeping her head afloat from the horrors of bone marrow transplants with the promise of some redemption.

"I'm not here to ask for forgiveness," she's surprised at how flat she sounds. "I just want to talk to you. I just miss...talking to you." He nods up at her with a look of paternal forbearance.

So Clarke takes the initiative, sitting where Raven has vacated and pouring out the whole story of the world outside Mount Weather since his departure; the council's decisions, Lexa's unsolicited wisdom, Raven berrating her, and Tondc. She feels as if she is laying out sins at his feet.

Bellamy listens with a grave expression, and for once doesn't argue or interject. Only as she says it out loud does she begin to understand what she's doing; all the things she should have been telling him, should have been working through with him are laid out, as if they can review them now.

She tapers off, and the silence of early dawn is deafening. After a moment Bellamy looks up at her with a tight smile. "Don't you want to know what Raven was talking to me about?"

She'd been so deeply entrenched in her goal of getting her speech out, the thought hadn't occurred to her, but he shares anyway.

"She came in to plead your case. Why you let the missile fall on TonDC. Why you lied about Octavia. Why I shouldn't be mad, why you'd been doing the best anyone could. As if my opinion would matter to you."

"I needed you here! I needed you, and I didn't understand how much until it was just me. I'm not...maybe I'm not as strong as I thought I was. Lexa was right about a lot of things, except that I wasn't me."

Bellamy frowns then, but his eyes still have the soft look she remembers, "Your secrets are safe with me Clarke. If that's what you came here for, you have it. " He's pulling his boots on, and a jacket. Desperation seizes her heart and Clarke does the only thing she can think of; she throws herself at him, bringing him crashing back down to the bed. Her inexperience shows when their teeth click painfully and her fingernails scrape haphazardly across his cheek, but there is no time to correct the mistake. He yanks away, and the tightness is back around his eyes, his look for Murphy, for Finn. His mouth opens to speak, then snaps closed. He turns and walks out.


End file.
